In recent years the expansion of computer use, the Internet and other factors have contributed to a global economy and global work environment. It is not uncommon for those in business and industry to interact on a daily basis with others in many countries. In fact, it is increasingly common for co-workers of an individual company to communicate regularly with others within the same company who are in other countries—anywhere around the world. With the increased prevalence of a global workforce and global interaction, the ability to communicate in other languages is becoming a necessity.
Further, while computer and printing technology has accelerated rapidly, in many instances the usefulness of high-speed communication devices and high-speed printers is of limited use for effecting communication of documents between users who are fluent in different languages. For example, a person may create a document in English and wish to send the document to users who understand only German. The difficulties associated with document communication may be further exacerbated in situations where the number of people and exclusive languages understood by each increase to three or more. The English document may have little or no use to correspondents who do not understand it. Of course, the document may be translated by a person who performs language translation services, but locating and enlisting the services of such skills can be a time consuming and costly process. Further, employing a translator each time a document is produced greatly reduces the efficiency associated with business and personal communication.
Alternatively, documents may be translated using a software program having language translation capabilities. Although language translation software applications are not typically as accurate as translations performed by persons skilled in language translation, language translation software tools are an attractive alternative for many computer users because the software may be used immediately upon receiving documents to quickly perform a rough translation.
Unfortunately, if a user opts to use a language translation software application to translate documents, the software program must be installed on the user's computer and the user must learn how to operate the language translation software. Moreover, when language translation software is used to translate documents, the usual single-step method of printing documents becomes a multiple step process. The additional steps may include receiving and opening the document, storing the document in a memory location on the user's computer, launching the language translation software, supplying the document to the translation software and executing the translation of the document. Further, if there are several users, each of whom need a different language translation, the document creator may have to perform the multiple steps many times. In addition, there are many printers available now for printing multiple copies, often called mopies, which can be collated. In some instances, there are needs to print mopies in several different languages for the same reasons rehearsed above, however the capability to do so is lacking.
Some existing copiers and printers are capable of evenly distributing output from a job between a plurality of trays in a collated manner. That is, it is known to collate output copies in a single language to form multi-page documents by depositing a copy of a first page of a multi-page original document in each of a plurality of output receptacles. A copy of the second page of the original is then copied and deposited into each of the output receptacles. This process continues until a complete set of all the pages of the original document is in a corresponding number of the output receptacles. Other collating methods are known. For example, it is known to produce collated output documents by depositing a complete multi-page document in a first output receptacle, then, depositing a second complete multi-page document in a second output receptacle, depositing a third complete document in a third receptacle, and so on, until the desired number of complete copies of the original have been produced. The prior art also includes a number of methods broadly dealing with document delivery to trays of document production apparatuses.
The teachings of this prior art, however, leave many problems in this field unresolved. While the printing of multiple copies has been limited in the past due to the generally higher cost of a printed page as compared to a photocopied page, technological advances have made the printing of multiple copies cost competitive as compared to photocopying. The result is that many modem printer users utilize a printer to produce multiple copies of documents. By way of example, a user may wish to print thirteen copies of an original in a first language to a first work group, four copies of the original in a second language to a second work group, nine copies of the original in a third language to a third work group, sixty-seven copies of the original in a fourth language to a fourth work group, and twenty one copies of the original in a fifth language to a fifth work group. The only known method for accomplishing these results would be to execute separate translating and printing jobs for each work group, or to execute one large print job and then manually subdivide and translate each of the respective work group copies in required numbers in subsequent steps. Further, each of these workgroups may have need for copies in two or more different languages depending on the fluency of the group members. Executing separate copy jobs, creating language translations, and/or manually separating an aggregate job is not practical when the required number of distribution sets becomes large.
These and other problems remain unresolved in the art. Thus, there is a need in the art for a system and method of producing multiple hardcopies of an electronic document in two or more languages as specified by a user.